Post your Questions & Topics for tomorrow’s AFTVnewscast 62

I’ll be live streaming this week’s episode of the AFTVnewscast tomorrow at 11am PT / 2pm ET. Post your questions or topics in the comments below for me to answer and discuss during the episode. Anything goes for questions, whether it’s about the Fire TV, AFTVnews, or tech in general. Let’s hear them! Even if you can’t watch live, ask your question now and catch the episode on YouTube later.

I was hopping you had an idea as to why my rooted FTV2 crashes. I have only ever noticed it doing it using SPMC or Kodi (I have tried both), but that is really the only app I use. Occasionally I will use another app, but 99% of the time it is SPMC. When it crashes it gets a black screen. It does it randomly, sometimes it will only crash once in a month, other times it will crash 100+ times in a day. I am running the latest pre rooted firmware.

I forgot to mention it is still somewhat responsive when it has crashed/has a black screen. If you stop the video you are watching when it does it using the remote, then unplug/replug it back in the video can be resumed. So I am guessing the only thing that really quit is the video out, but this is only a guess.

Jon – I had this exact problem on a non rooted FTV1. It seemed that the only way to recover was to perform a power cycle.
The actual fault was a dodgy HDMI cable!! Power cycling just disturbed the cables making it look like the fix. After replacing the HDMI lead I’ve had no more “crashes” / Black screens.
So all along it was just the video cutting out because of the cable.
Hope this is the simple fix for you.

Do you have any updates on if the Kodi development team has found some people who will continue to develop Kodi for Android? The last I heard Kodi for Android wear in danger of ceasing due to lack of programmers willing to help.

Do you have any updates on if the Kodi development team has found some people who will continue to develop Kodi for Android? The last I heard Kodi for Android was in danger of ceasing due to lack of programmers willing to help.

I was about to buy a Kindle Fire HD 8 to use with my FireTV for getting offline content on my TV but I noticed it doesn’t do screen mirroring. Is this a new Amazon policy? Is screen mirroring finished now? Why would they remove this feature?

Just bought a FTV Stick Gen 2 and would like to block updates on it. The DNS method seems to be the only option right now, and it sounds like as soon as my outgoing IP changes (which I’m not typically aware of) I’ll no longer be protected. Are there any other methods in the works that could potentially block updates?

Second: Is there a way to get alerts to new articles on AFTVNEWS.com? Specifically I’d like to know when killer deals are available like the free programmable dash button.

hi Elias, … I recently bought a Fire TV (to use in Germany where I spend some of my time) and a Fire TV Stick (to use in Bulgaria, where I am from), … I travel often between the two countries. Well, I was disappointed by the INVALID_GEO_IP message I get in Bulgaria. I know these regulations exist, but it is me, the same Amazon customer and it is still EU, when I am in Bulgaria. Any indications these regulations might change in near future? Thank you!

Elias, in your opinion what does the future look like for Amazon in regard to home automation? We are in the midst of seeing Alexa act as a hub of sorts for various household appliances (Ooma, lighting, etc), but I was wondering what you feel the next steps for Amazon may be and how the FireTV and Alexa fit into that?

Streaming Piracy Prevention, or SPP, works using a “forensic watermark,” which “identifies the subscriptions/sessions used to source the content, and shuts down the source through the video security system — all in real-time

Cisco plans to get this started very soon.
Do you think this will effect yputube and other streaming services that are legitimate?